The ending so much as the start
by Valhalla
Summary: A life lived isn't always a puzzle complete. Charlotte, Daniel, Jeanette Lewis, Charles Widmore; Charlotte/Daniel. Spoilers up to S6 finale.


**Title:** The ending so much as the start  
**Characters/Pairings:** Charlotte; Daniel, Jeanette Lewis, Charles Widmore (Charlotte/Daniel)  
**Rating:** PG  
**Summary:** A life lived isn't always a puzzle complete.  
**Spoilers/Warnings:** Up to S6 finale; character death  
**Disclaimer:**Not mine.  
**A/N:** Title from Feist.

_33._

Her life can be arranged like puzzle pieces, she thinks as she dies.

Shapes and angles that never fit quite right, never slotted together or clicked in a way that made her think _there; I'm finished, I'm done, it all makes sense now_. Nothing makes sense, even at the end; it makes _less_ sense, even - that she's here, that she's home, that she's about to die. Doesn't make bloody sense and it's not bloody _fair_, that she'd only ever had the faintest outlines of the full picture (crystal blues and greens all bleeding together in her memory), that she'd thought this place would make her complete.

But this place is death - she knows that now - and the thing she'd wanted most still hangs just beyond her fingertips, always, forever out of reach.

_6._

_Mummy, where are we going?_ she asks for the millionth time, feels her mother grasp her hand tighter, too tight, push her favourite teddy into her arms. _Why can't Daddy come with us?_

She gets lifted down from the van and the alarms hurt her ears - it's so loud (firecrackers too, she thinks, back near the playground) and that sad man told her she had to leave and she's scared, clutches her bear and it smells like her house and her daddy and why can't she just go _home_? - before she stumbles down the dock and gets loaded into the sub. It's dark in there, and cold (there's a man and a woman who get to go in first, and they've both got blood on their faces, like someone was mean and beat them up, and she doesn't like that); her mommy lets her hold Dr. Chang's new baby, though, and that's alright, because he's so little and his dark eyes watch her every time she moves and she feels proud she's a big enough girl to take care of him.

Eventually Dr. Chang's wife takes the baby away and gives her a cup of orange juice instead. She drinks it down in one gulp and _sleep_, her mother whispers, tucks her into one of the bunks and it almost feels like nap time at home - _I want a story first_, she mumbles, but she's already so tired, her eyes drooping shut - and _get some rest, darling_, Mommy says again, _sleep and forget about this dream_.

_13._

She only smokes to piss her mother off.

Comes home with the smell clinging to her clothes, fingertips covered in ash, and it does - it's only a tipping point (it's the cigs or the broken curfew or the stolen alcohol or the shirt that smells like boys' cologne first and then always, always the island), and _you're mad, Charlotte_, her mother fumes as David shakes his head, silent, says it in that voice of deadly calm that means she's struck a nerve, _you made the island up when you were a child and I've no time to indulge your silly bedtime stories anymore_.

"I'm not crazy," she hollers back, yells so hard she feels tears peaking at the corners of her eyes, wetting her cheeks, so hard it's like she can't even breath, because she _does_ remember - yellow houses and stretches of white sand and an endless jungle just past the fences. The swingset creaking as the world flew under her feet. The vague impression of someone, so faint he's like a ghost - dark eyes, hair, no features she can remember but just that sadness; that she'll never forget - telling her she had to go.

"I'm not," she says again, barely breathes it out this time, catches the softness in her mother's eyes before she's out the door and into the night.

_22._

"Charlotte's home!"

Both of her sisters fly at her in a whirlwind of red plaits and school-uniformed plaid, latch onto her legs as she laughs and slips off her knapsack, dumps the rest of her belongings accumulated during her past year at school in the hallway of her mother and step-father's house.

They're still so young - 10 and eight, barely older than when she left the island - too young to understand, so she kisses them both against the crowns of the heads, acquiesces to pleas for a story and settles into her middle sister's bed with each of them curled under her arms, reads the next chapter of_The Last Battle_. Later, when they've finally drifted off and slumped back into the pillows, she pulls the blankets up to their chins, abandons the dog-eared book and retreats to the kitchen, accepts a cup of tea from her mother and doesn't say much.

She's older now, and tries not to argue like they used to- - they stick to the weather (too hot for summer in Bromsgrove), her grades (top of the class, even in her last year in Kent's anthropology program), the boy she was seeing (not anymore; she'd laughed off the kids-and-marriage question and stopped returning his calls).

The island still hangs over every word, every look, but they don't talk about it anymore, especially with her sisters old enough to understand the fighting and David the weary peacemaker, watching her with a tight smile that says _give it up, Char; this is one fight you won't ever win_. He doesn't understand, her sisters and friends don't either, even with their fragile stalemate her mother still refuses to -

Charlotte comes home the next Christmas and starts scheduling December digs after that.

_33._

Hitting the water - even half-tangled in her parachute gear, the icy cold hitting her lungs like a jackhammer, none of her team in sight and a group of wary strangers on the banks in front of her - is the best feeling in the damn world, the most _feeling_ she thinks she remembers in years. She's almost dizzy from it, the tactile sensation of the river against her skin, wrapped in _I'm here, I made it_.

It's a long way from London, from the moment Widmore had given her the job (she'd crashed one of his ridiculously elabourate arse-kissing parties in a black dress cut low in the front and even lower in the back, got whisked away to his study by one of his security detail and fought to bite back her surprise when he already had an offer for a place on his freighter - sealed by a handshake and a glass of MacCutcheon's - ready), from her mother's lies.

Locke decides to keep her in one of the houses once they get back to the barracks (that's another high; cresting over a hill and seeing those pinpricks of yellow, the schoolhouse, the swingset, one little bungalow with a saggy porch that brings back a burst of memories), hands chaffing against the rope and her chest still aching and the larger bloke - Hurley - her only company.

"This place is awfully well-kept," she remarks, keeping her voice light, watching as Hurley shrugs, offers_yeah dude, the Others kept it pretty tidy once they moved in_ and _Hostiles_, her mind translates, feels a chill. He explains all of it after, like he's reciting some far-off history or something from a book - the purge that had wiped out all of Dharma, the bodies buried in some pit (_Dad_, she thinks, plaintive, remembers Widmore's mission for them to shut down the Tempest, never explaining why).

She's so angry after that, even when Sayid gets her traded back to Dan and the beach camp, none of them understand (Daniel tries, he does, but he just _can't_) and there isn't anything to map out to the rest of the puzzle, no clues to follow to the answers she's so desperate for. They manage to deactivate the station (swears if she ever sees Ben Linus again she'll be the one shooting first) and help the survivors - not that they let them out of their sight once they're back from the station - and when they start to leave for the freighter she stays, but it's still not enough.

It's not enough and then the nosebleeds start.

Days (weeks, months) later, one piece starts to fit, though, as the light at the corner of her eyes starts to dim and everything just feels so heavy, dragging - the breath in her lungs and her arms as she tries to raise them, tries to stand and tell Daniel _it's fine, I'm alright_. He looks so sad, and she just wants to let him know that she can fight this, not to worry so much, tell her the bloody truth already, and something clicks, something that never had before (in Fiji, on the freighter, on the island - he'd looked so familiar and she could never place it).

_I think that man was you._

Then there's the taste of chocolate; bittersweet.

_33._

Dan's waiting for her offstage when she gets her award, after she rushes through a clumsy reiteration of the speech she'd scribbled out on notecards and crammed into her purse earlier that day (_too much champagne_, she thinks, cursing herself) and leaves the microphone, holding another modern-looking crystal _thing_ that'll get put on her bookshelf and never be dusted. She's proud - of course she's proud; Dan is too, gathers her into a sweeping hug and kisses her deeply the second she's behind the curtains, and her sisters and parents, clapping brightly in the audience- - but it's the work that matters, and sometimes between the hobnobbing and the charity galas and the ridiculous fundraisers (though it's also how she met her impossibly wonderful musician boyfriend, so she's not completely ungrateful) it seems like people forget that.

Granted, the funding for next month's Tunisia trip had suddenly fallen through at the last minute - Daniel's father having second thoughts about the value of the trip or some rubbish like that; rumours of the polar bear skeleton they'd found there have her itching to go but they'll be other digs, other just-as-interesting discoveries - and sometimes she still gets the strangest urge to buy the next ticket to the South Pacific and charter a boat, find the island her parents had taken her to for a few years as a toddler, the one with some hippie commune science community (she'd told Dan the story one night and he'd paused for a second, brow creasing, produced a journal with what looked like bearings scratched into a page and neither of them have talked about it since).

"Let's go on a trip," she says on impulse as they thread back through the crowd of overdressed researchers and wealthy patrons towards her family, Charles and Eloise, along with Dr. Chang and Miles, seated beside them. "With my dig cancelled I've got a few weeks free."

He grins and leans forward to kiss her cheek, hand skimming the small of her back, tells her _absolutely_ as they rejoin their table, her mother and father, younger sisters, beaming with pride, Daniel's parents and Pierre and Miles starting with congratulations, and she can't help but let a swell of warmth - happiness; whole, complete - settle through her.

Turning back to Dan, Charlotte smiles.

"How d'you feel about Fiji?"


End file.
